Birth rate trend: 5 reasons why millennials are having fewer babies

Chief among them is an expensive economy riddled by a pandemic and that lacks affordable childcare, coinciding with decades of progress for professional women as choosing to be child-free becomes less of a taboo.Here are five reasons why millennials are having fewer babies.Economic progress has caused the opportunity cost of having kids to increase. That's not to mention the added stress of parenting a child learning remotely from home while juggling remote work.Brookings recently found that there have been 60,000 fewer births so far during the pandemic, less of a drop than expected, although data for children conceived during the first pandemic winter still isn't available.A recent Pew Research Center Survey revealed that of childless adults who think they won't have kids, 5% cited environmental reasons as a factor in their decision. And a Morning Consult poll of 4,400 Americans found that one in four childless adults say climate change influenced their reproductive decisions.Young adults who said climate change is affecting their reproductive decision-making were uncertain about the future and worried about overpopulation and overconsumption, per a separate study from the University of Arizona.Just ask Josephine Ferorelli, founder of Conceivable Future, a network that hosts house parties for people to discuss the threat of climate change to reproduction, who told The New York Times last year she saw an uptick in interest from prospective parents.